1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information technology (IT) infrastructure of an enterprise. More specifically, the present invention relates to an IT infrastructure that enables a zero latency enterprise (ZLE) through real time integration of enterprise services, business, processes, applications and data, and optimizes information exchange between enterprise applications.
2. Background Art
For maintaining the desired comprehensive view of their operations, organizations have to integrate their systems via their information technology (IT) infrastructure. IT infrastructures allow valuable information to be distributed across organizations to their groups of information consumers, including remote employees, business partners and customers.
When addressing their critical information technology needs, organizations often resort to new best-of-the-breed applications (or solutions) that supplement their legacy applications. In order to leverage their existing applications, organizations integrate their legacy applications with the new applications, a practice known as enterprise application integration (EAI). To this end, software vendors have responded by building tools, known as EAI products, alas different tools by different vendors, to automate the integration process.
With conventional solutions in place, organizations have been using some form of the EAI platform to integrate and exchange information between their applications. However, with substantial amounts of information located on disparate systems and platforms, information is not necessarily present in the desired form and place. Independent configuration for disparate industry standards and technologies makes systems integration requirements difficult to meet. The distinctive features of business applications that are tailored to suit the requirements of a particular domain complicate the integration even further. In addition, the new and legacy software applications are often incompatible and their ability to efficiently share information with each other is diminished.
Deficiencies in integration and data sharing are indeed a difficult problem of IT environments for any enterprise. When requiring information for a particular transaction flow that involves several distinct applications, the inability of organizations to operate as one-organ, rather than separate parts creates a challenge in information exchange and results in economic inefficiencies. Accordingly the present invention addresses these and related issues.